VOL. 5 No. 1 | February 2014

Bioethics News.

01/23/2015

By sequencing the billions of chemical letters in a cell’s DNA, which make up the human genome, scientists may be able to better estimate the risk of a person developing cancer, heart, biochemical and metabolic diseases.

01/21/2015

Like legions of hyperactive butlers, many of the brainy gadgets being developed for the Internet of Things will anticipate our needs and make choices for us — without being told what to do — marking a momentous transformation in our relationship with machines.

01/20/2015

A contract dispute between health insurance provider Blue Shield of California and the Sutter Health network of doctors and hospitals is threatening to force nearly 280,000 consumers in Northern and Central California to find new doctors.

01/15/2015

In recent years, aging research has been turned upside down. As Stanford bioethicist Christopher Scott, PhD, and his co-author, Laura DeFrancesco, PhD, write in Nature Biotechnology, it has a new face and it’s longevity.

01/14/2015

Get ready for a Warhol wave in 2015, and not just at auction. About 40 exhibitions of that artist’s work — much of it previously unseen by the public — will be flooding university art museums and institutions.

01/12/2015

Millions more students worldwide could train as doctors and nurses using electronic learning, which is just as effective as traditional medical training, a review commissioned by the World Health Organization has found.

01/09/2015

The past two years have been a rough and transformative time for the controversial DIY genetic testing company 23andMe. At the end of 2013, the Food and Drug Administration requested that the company shut down its main service, an analysis of a person’s genome gleaned from spit samples that anyone who purchased a kit could send in, noting that interpreting human genes—understanding what changes in DNA mean, and how they contribute or don’t contribute to disease—is still too much of a black box.

01/07/2015

In the late 1990s, scientists studying children’s health pondered crucial questions they couldn’t answer: Conditions as diverse as asthma and autism were increasing in prevalence, with no clear reason why.

01/06/2015

Toward the end of Janisse Flowers’s pregnancy, a nurse at her gynecologist’s office asked her to download an iPhone app that would track how often she text messaged with friends, how long she talked on the phone and how far she traveled each day.

01/06/2015

A deal being announced today with Genentech points the way for 23andMe, the personal genetics company backed by Facebook billionaire Yuri Milner and Google Ventures to become a sustainable business – even if the company’s discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stretch on for years.

01/05/2015

In November 2014, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed its intent to regulate thousands of medical diagnostic tests being performed in as many as 11 000 clinical laboratories throughout the United States, focusing especially on genomic medicine.

12/11/2014

One of the two psychologists who devised the CIA’s harsh Bush-era interrogation methods said on Wednesday that a scathing U.S. Senate report on the torture of foreign terrorism suspects “took things out of context” and made false accusations.

12/11/2014

Less than one quarter of one percent of abortion procedures result in major complications, a very low rate that is comparable to minor outpatient procedures in the U.S., according to a study of more than 50,000 women.

12/04/2014

Scientists have made the most comprehensive map yet of African genetic variation and say it should help them learn more about the role genes play in diseases such as malaria, hemorrhagic fever and hypertension in populations there.

12/04/2014

Surfing the net, going to museums or joining a club might have an unexpected side effect: improving the ability of older people to understand drug labels and doctors’ instructions, according to a new study in the UK.

12/03/2014

The benefits of male circumcision outweigh the risks, according a long awaited draft of federal guidelines from U.S. health officials released on Tuesday, which indicate that scientific evidence supports recommending the procedure.

12/02/2014

The chief of China’s powerful tobacco monopoly on Monday pushed back against government efforts to curb smoking, a habit the World Health Organization says accounts for as many as a million deaths a year.